Monday, June 11, 2012

Entre Chien et Loup

I learned a new
phrase today. I learned several
variants: “L’heure entre chien et loup” is my favorite.

A literal
translation would be: “the hour between dog and wolf.” The common French usage? It’s a reference to those ambiguous hours we
English call dawn, dusk or twilight. What I love about this term, this phrase, is
that it carries within it so many layers of meaning.

Ya just gotta love
four words strung together that can send you on a crazy mind-bender.

The French linguist
would explain that the term refers to a specific time of day, when the light is
such that one can’t distinguish between a dog or wolf. A Scot may refer to this as the “darking”
hour or “the gloaming.” It doesn’t
surprise me at all that folks who tend to flocks in fog-shrouded valleys and
moors would have a certain reverence for the ambiguous light that complicates
the matter of distinguishing friend from foe - the dog from the wolf.

It’s the ambiguity
that intrigues.

In that hour
between dog and wolf, we can’t know if we’re safe or threatened. We can't be sure if our eyes deceive, if we truly know what we think we know. We’re caught somewhere between comfort (ignorant bliss?) and fear. It’s
good, of course, to be able to distinguish between the two, but...I’ve never
mastered that.

10 Comments:

What an interesting, meaning packed phrase. No poem about it? If it keeps preying on my mind, I might have to try to write a poem, as you say it suggests so much. Thanks for enlarging my metaphoric vocabulary.

I'm as thrilled as you Ms. Titanium. Apparently, someone's about to publish a finance/investment book with the phrase "between dog and wolf" in the title. Can't say I was all that intrigued by the book, but the phrase grabbed me by the throat.

Ooh, I'm happy to know I still remember some of my French! Around here it's the hour between the dog and the coyote. Dusk is such a mysterious time. But maybe the saying could also capture a time in the lifespan.

After reading this, my interpretation of the phrase may have been wrong for a long time.

I've always taken it to mean the lull after which the dogs have gone to bed, but the wolves have yet to come out. Like the quiet time in a pub/bar when the after-work drinkers are going home, but the evening revellers have yet to arrive.